Miracle or Delusion?
This is too funny not to pick fun at: Miracle on Madison Street.
A two-foot-high tree stump in Passaic, New Jersey, is apparently shaped like a veiled Virgin Mary with a bowed head. People have left candles, flowers, and handwritten notes and prayers.
Which brings up my first question — how do these people know what Mary looked like in the first place? Sure, there are a ton of paintings. All painted by people who never actually saw her. There are a million statues. Guess how many times Mary posed for a statue in her life? So how can anything be compared to her, really? Moreover, how can people be so sure of what Mary looked like, that a simple tree stump can deserve flowers and prayers?
Which brings me to my second question. So what exactly is it saying, that the image of Virgin Mary is seen in a tree stump. Now, if the icon were beaming down from a cloud, wow, now that’s a sign! But a tree stump? I think it’s a sign that people are getting too fat. The Virgin Mary came down from heaven and said, “You see this stump? That’s what you are. Stumpy. Short and squat. And all your bark is falling out.” Right.
Do you really think there will really be an investigation? Now I looked up the world miracle, just to make sure there wasn’t some unknown, never-used definition like:
But no, the definitions were pretty much what I expected:
Let’s break this down.
1) An event: well this wasn’t exactly an event. This poor tree stump has probably looked like this for months or years. Hardly a surprise appearance, Mary. The ‘event’ in question was simply that somebody noticed.
2) that appears inexplicable: inexplicable? It’s a tree stump. It’s not even a UFO sighting. Just a tree stump. They’re fairly common. But, you say, what about the shape? Well, here’s the description: “resembles a veiled Virgin Mary with a bowed head.” Now we’re not even talking about the shape of a human face, but of a veiled head. Well, that’s just inexplicable, I tell you what — wood shaped like hanging cloth. I’ve never seen that before….
3) a deviation from the known laws of nature: again, it’s a tree stump. A tree stump. Did you hear me? A tree stump. They grow. They’re different shapes. It happens. Now you want something that goes against the laws of nature, look at the rest of New Jersey.
Well, I admit a picture would help. But….gasp….there’s no picture there! Gee, are they trying to hide something….
Fortunately this is one of the saner ‘miracles’ in New Jersey. Five years ago, in Jersey City, a supermarket drew a crowd with “an image of the Virgin Mary on a freezer door…. The silhouette of a woman in a hooded garment….” Only in New Jersey, folks.
October 23rd, 2003 at 2:26 am
Dude, that’s hilarious. What really gets me is people who make much ado about the image of the virgin Mary or Elvis it such objects as pancakes or a turd.
Never mind the fact that although most people see a beautiful Caucasian Aryan woman in their minds chances are that she looked a lot more dumpy, tired, weather- and care-worn, and most definitely semitic (e.g. black hair, dark skin and eyes).
A few years ago I read an article in the International Herald Tribune about some British scientists who took pictures of thirty-something-old Middle-Eastern men and made an eigen-face image of what they claimed Jesus probably looked like. I tell you what, that face looked NOTHING like 99% of the depictions of Jesus in religious art.
In fact, it looked eerily like the head chef on my kibbutz’s dining hall in Israel (where I was working at the time of this article’s publication). This guy (I forgot his name to my chagrin) is big, swarthy, prickly bearded, gap toothed, and as sweet as a giant teddy bear (but not the giant teddy bear in Akira).
This chef guy was really cool too. One time I worked the Friday early evening shift with him in the kitchen and had to prepare the food for about one thousand people. Half-way through our shift he tells me to stop working and sit down. He walks out of the kitchen and comes back with two pitchers foll of beer. Twenty minutes later I had maybe two cups-worth and he finished the rest with a visiting friend of his. What a guy.